Cheung Yiu-lam, you have been found guilty after trial of trafficking in 4.86 kilogrammes of methamphetamine hydrochloride, or ‘Ice’ as it is commonly called. The jury found that you had arranged to meet up with Yeung Hoi-ting on 18 September at Sheng Shui Railway Station and that she passed to you the drugs in exchange for HK$20,000. You were to take a taxi from there to Mong Kok with those drugs for the purpose of trafficking in them.
Your protestation that she was your girlfriend; that you had no idea that she was carrying dangerous drugs, although the bag placed at your feet was dangerous drugs, was not accepted by the jury; nor were the allegations made by your counsel upon your instructions against a young police officer.
The criminal courts are not an opportunity to cast wild allegations against the integrity of the Hong Kong Police Force, and it is not to your credit that you did so in order to save yourself at any cost. You were prepared to ruin the career of a police officer. That shows your callous disregard for others which is also evidenced in the fact that you clearly had no qualms about bringing into Hong Kong just under 5 kilogrammes of ‘Ice’. That ‘Ice’ would do significant harm to many citizens of Hong Kong, not least the young and vulnerable, and no doubt you were to be richly rewarded for doing so.
You had no obvious means of income in September 2014. Your suggestion that you operated a mahjong parlour was a bare assertion and no more. I take the view that to be trusted with as much as 4.86 kilogrammes of ‘Ice’, you were a trusted part of an organised criminal gang.
I have listened to what Mr Boyton has said on your behalf which is necessarily limited by the defence you chose to run at trial and which was disbelieved. Whilst you have a significant criminal record, given the sentence which is to be passed upon you, I will not aggravate that sentence further by reflecting your previous drug offending.
Nothing which can be said can mitigate the severe sentence which must be passed for this offending. For the trafficking in 4.86 kilogrammes of ‘Ice’, the starting point after trial is 26 years and 3 months under the guidelines laid down in HKSAR v Tam Yi Chun [2014] 3 HKLRD 691 and HKSAR v Abdallah [2009] 2 HKLRD 437.
However, you also assisted in the knowing importation of that amount by Yeung into Hong Kong from China, and so this was a joint enterprise. And in accordance with Abdallah I enhance that sentence by 2 years to take into account that importation.
The total starting point is therefore 28 years and 3 months. You had a trial and you were found guilty by a jury. You do not therefore receive any benefit for a plea of guilty or for saving court time and costs. You will go to prison for 28 years and 3 months.
Yeung Hoi-ting
On 5 April of this year, Yeung Hoi-ting, you pleaded guilty to trafficking in 4.86 kilogrammes of methamphetamine hydrochloride which you trafficked on 18 September 2016. At that time you agreed a statement of facts, antecedents statement and criminal record which was read out to you and you made no objection to the prosecution’s application for disposal and forfeiture of exhibits.
I note that you accepted by that plea that you were handed a wad of notes by Chung Yiu-nam and that you started to walk away from the taxi in which Chung was sitting just before you were stopped and arrested.
On arrest, you denied knowledge of the contents of the Paddington Bear bag which you were carrying, and of the HK$20,000 found in your backpack. But by reason of your plea and the fact that you take no issue with the forfeiture of the HK$20,000, you now accept that you were trafficking in dangerous drugs and that the $20,000 was a reward for the role which you played.
You are a mainland Chinese national and you received education up to form three. You are now 34 years of age, married but separated and unemployed at the time of your arrest. You had previously lived with your husband and son at a flat in Tsui King Tsuen, Sheng Shui, and you were on CSSA. I have been told that you separated from your husband in 2013 and from that time you lived in Shenzhen although you are a resident of Hong Kong.
You have a criminal record dating back to 2011 when you were 30 years of age and you were dealt with for trafficking in ketamine and received 30 months’ imprisonment. That was less than 5 years ago. You were also prosecuted for possession of ‘Ice’ in 2014 for which you received a Drug Addiction Treatment Centre order and were released from that on 11 May 2015. So you were serving a sentence of DATC after your arrest for this offence and I presume the underlying offending which resulted in that sentence predated this offence.
You clearly have a problem with drugs and you certainly did not learn from your 30 months sentence received 2011. If it was not for the fact that the sentence I must pass upon you today will be a severe one, I would have been inclined to have marked that attitude with an enhanced sentence. As it is, the sentence which I pass today is punishment enough.
I have listened to everything which Mr Leung has said on your behalf and I have had the benefit of hearing the evidence in the trial of your co-defendant which suggested, or least he suggested, that you were the sole person responsible for this offending and that he, Mr Chung, had nothing to do with it. But the jury rejected that suggestion.
For the trafficking in 4.86 kilogrammes of ‘Ice’, the starting point after trial as you have heard is 26 years and 3 months under the guidelines laid down in HKSAR v Tam Yi Chun [2014] 3 HKLRD 691; and HKSAR v Abdallah [2009] 2 HKLRD 437.
However, you imported that large amount of dangerous drugs into Hong Kong from China and in accordance with Abdallah I enhance the sentence by 2 years to take into account that importation. The total starting point is therefore 28 years and 3 months.
Giving you one-third discount for you plea, I reduce that sentence to 18 years and 10 months. I have not discounted it further to take account of your offer to give assistance, as I note that you did not give evidence at trial and other information available to the court, which is untested, suggests that you were open to giving evidence for the defence in return for payment.
Other than the evidence for Chung Wai-man who gave evidence on oath that he did give you $46,000 whilst you were on remand, I do not have any proof that this allegation was in fact true but it certainly militates against this court taking your offer into consideration at this stage without more.
You will go to prison for 18 years and 10 months. The sentence of DATC passed upon you after you were remanded in custody for this offence is to be counted as time served concurrently with this matter.